"Paul Preuss - Venus Prime 2 - Maelstrom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

Arthur C. Clarke

Colombo, Sri Lanka




Prologue


T he thin wind whistled shrilly along the knife-edged ice. Needles of ice and scallops of ice thrust out of
the compacted sand into the wind-borne grit. Gargoyles of ice hung from cliffs a kilometer high, brooding
over the polar plain.

The wind was too thin to sustain a living thing but not too thin to carry the abrasive grit. The grit etched the
rock and heaped the sand and carved the ice and the hard stone into arches and buttresses and buttes. The thin
wind was a digger.

The hole it was digging now, in the sand beneath the ice, had a piece of metal in it. The metal was shiny and
hard, not so hard that it had not been shatteredтАУwho knows when or howтАУbut so hard the wind-borne grit
could not mar its mirror surface.

Something else had etched the metal and dug channels in it. The channels were different from each other but
all the same height and width and depth. They ran in straight lines. There were three dozen different kinds of
them, but they repeated themselves in various sequences until the total number of them, etched in the metal,
was a thousand and more.

A Martian year after the wind dug the etched mirror out of the sand beneath the ice, a man in a pressure suit
came along and found it lying exposed there and carried it away.


тАЬYouтАЩre crazy, Johnny, you canтАЩt keep a thing like that secret. How you gonna make money on somethinтАЩ
looks like nothinтАЩ nobodyтАЩs ever seen before?тАЭ

тАЬAre you sayinтАЩ itтАЩs not valuable, Liam?тАЭ

тАЬIтАЩm sayinтАЩ itтАЩs too valuable. ItтАЩs one of a kind. You wonтАЩt get no money fer it, under the table or over.тАЭ



file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Bureaub...Preuss%20-%20Venus%20Prime%202%20-%20Maelstrom.html (4 of 180)23-12-2006 18:56:41
 ARTHUR C. CLARKE'S VENUS PRIME: VOLUME 2

This was about as private as you could get around here, in the poker nest under the pipe rack in the drill rig
dome, where the booze and the dope were cached. The crew boss knew all about it; he didnтАЩt give a squeak,
as long as nobody showed up high on any company monitors. But you had to whisper in here. These damn
domes carried sound from one side to the other just as good as a phone link, and you never knew who was
standing over there listening in.

тАЬHuh. Never thought IтАЩd be accused of beinтАЩ in possession of somethinтАЩ too valuable.тАЭ